In a scene that could be from a 2012 sequel to Airplane, overzealous Homeland Security agents recently flexed their muscles on a UK couple who were heading to Los Angeles for a little good-natured fun and partying.

It all began when @LeighBryan tweeted that he was about to “go and destroy America.” Agents then began poring over his previous Twitter postings and discovered another, which they apparently took to be a revelation that Bryan and his partner planned to exhume the body of Marilyn Monroe. Yes, really. In fact, agents went so far as to search the couple’s luggage for shovels upon detaining them at LAX.

After being questioned for several hours at the airport, the two were whisked away in a van carrying illegal immigrants and reportedly locked up in separate cells. Instead of enjoying the sites, they got to spend some quality time with drug dealers — not exactly the way you want folks to remember their vacation to the US, especially when this type of thing could have been easily avoided.

Apart from being able to do background checks on Bryan and his friend Emily Bunting, a quick trip to Urban Dictionary would have verified Bryan’s contention that “destroy” was slang for party hard. That’s certainly not a crime in America — just ask Andrew WK. The digging up Marilyn Monroe bit? A reference to Family Guy.

Also chuckleworthy: in their report, Agents referred to what Bryan did as “posting to his Tweeter account.” Ah, the long arm of the law. Clearly so in touch with today’s technologies.

Let’s hope the authorities get all this stuff figured out before they go ahead and flip the switch on that new social media monitoring tool the FBI wants. A couple of feature requests from us in the peanut gallery: integrated regional slang definition lookups and popular culture reference engine.